Inhaltsbereich

Lehrveranstaltungen Wintersemester 2015/2016

Essaykurs

Thomas Aquinas on the Principles of Nature

In his two treatses On the Principles of Nature (before 1256 AD) and On the Mixture of the Elements (around 1270) the celebrated philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) set out the essentials of his natural philosophy. The course offers an introduction to Aquinas’s conception of nature through close reading and discussion of these treatises and other pertinent texts. The doctrine of Aquinas will be examined in relation to its fundamental options and situated historically within the debate that the Dominican Master sustained with the representatives of Greek and Arabic philosophy -- most notably Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes. In-depth philosophical analysis, combined with wide-ranging exploration of his philosophical sources, will bring out the profundity and specificity of Aquinas’s theory of nature, its principles, and dynamism.Voraussetzungen: Knowledge of EnglishAnmeldung: (LSF) pre-registration is not necessary